Thanks, Trish. (BTW, I hope you don't get multiple copies of this--my computer keeps losing the message and I have to start over.)

I had not gotten around to the WWI draft records, so I'm glad you mentioned it. As you say, the census records do show Martha as widowed x3 and as having 6 living children. Since I never heard of any siblings to my grandmother and great-uncle, I wonder if the census taker just lost his place and wrote 6 and 6 on line 56 for Martha, because Mary B. (my grandmother) is just two lines down and she had 6 children at the time.

And about the 3 marriages . . . ? I have never heard that. I had done the math, though, and thought it odd that a woman in that culture would not have a first child until her mid-thirties. Maybe it's because she was a spinster, or maybe there were other children we never knew about.

My mother says my father told her that his grandmother and uncle were born out of wedlock and that their mother had never been married. No one else in the family--my cousins, I mean--have heard this, and there are none of my father's generation left to give credence to or to deny that tidbit. I have long wondered if we would ever find out.

Such speculations--but at least I've started down the long road to learning more about my ancestors. So far, I have found an immigrant gggg marrying the indentured servant he brought over from England, a mother of a newborn killed by Indian raids in north Florida, murder indictments in Georgia, and various other surprises!

Thanks for your suggestions.

Dianne

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